


Proprioception

by TrulyCertain



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games), Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Gen, Recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-28
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-07-18 12:12:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16118213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrulyCertain/pseuds/TrulyCertain
Summary: "I never asked for this." Hurt, recovery, and the six months we didn't see.





	Proprioception

 

 

> **Proprioception**  (/ˌproʊprioʊˈsɛpʃən, -priə-/  _PROH-pree-o-SEP-shən_ ), from Latin  _proprius_ , meaning "one's own", "individual", and  _capio_ ,  _capere_ , to take or grasp, is the sense of the relative position of one's own parts of the body and strength of effort being employed in movement. It is sometimes described as the "sixth sense".
> 
> In humans, it is provided by  **proprioceptors**  in skeletal striated muscles (muscle spindles) and tendons (Golgi tendon organ) and the fibrous membrane in joint capsules. It is distinguished from exteroception, by which one perceives the outside world, and interoception, by which one perceives pain, hunger, etc., and the movement of internal organs.

 

 

 

He wakes from blood and pain and shattered glass to… a white ceiling. Pain’s still there, but it’s a distant hum like the rest of the sounds around him. Something to worry about later.

He blinks, and something’s… different. He doesn’t remember his vision being this good, and he was one of the best shots in his unit. He can see the grain and texture of the dirt underneath bright white lights, the smear of blood in the corner of one of the tiles -

He remembers.

“Megan…” he manages, and it comes out as a cough. Then a few more.

“Mr. Jensen?” The voice is surprised, and female. Not the one he’s looking for.

He tries to sit up, to look, and the dull pain that followed him out of his dream is suddenly sharp, real. It whites out the space behind his eyes. He thinks in that second something flashes yellow-gold, some kind of number, something. He can’t make sense of much when his chest and shoulders are screaming. It’s gone before he can -

He hears something beep. His chest unseizes, and he can breathe again. Must be morphine.

The… nurse, he guesses from the uniform, hovers above him, looking concerned, and he opens his mouth. His throat’s drier than sand. He can’t think… How long’s he been out? He thinks back and it’s blood and pain again. Lasers. Something about lasers. He knows it’s nothing good. Long enough and he’ll remember, but that doesn’t matter, he doesn’t –

“Megan? The others?” It comes out too fast and rusty with disuse.

“They’re being taken care of. You need to rest. And we need to talk about pain relief.” She frowns, reaches over him to plump his pillow, looks at something past him. It’s not her fault, but… he doesn’t need a damn pillow. He needs to see them, to make sure they’re safe. To talk to Sarif. Something. He’s useless like this.

He reaches out, tries to steady himself. Grips what has to be a bedrail. Squints at white against white and tries to focus, wondering why they have to make the LIMB uniforms so damn bright, the hospital ones aren’t nearly this bad –

Wait.

“This is a LIMB clinic.”

She tilts her head, looks confused. “Yes.”

“LIMB clinics are for augs.”

She’s not fast enough to hide the look on her face. Sad. No, guilty.

He tenses, a shrillness starting in his mind and getting louder. “Why am I - ?”

Her eyes widen, and she looks down. And he realises that the noise in his head… isn’t in his head.

He hears a high screech of metal, feels his fingers tighten, and looks too. He watches the bedrail buckle under a hand. Some kind of metal… hand… looks like an aug…

No. Jesus, no.

It lets go when he realises, like it’s been caught. He thinks of lifting it, waits for his real hand to appear and for that to have been some kind of machine, or… It moves. The fingers flex and shine in the light, and he lifts it to stare at it. He moves to grab it with his other hand, and that’s… that’s metal, too. No, it can’t - But he can still feel -  

He touches metal wrists, forearms… it goes all the way up. “What the hell have you done to me?”

“Sir, I really wouldn’t - “

He scrabbles to sit and barely notices the pain. His heartbeat’s a roar in his ears.

“Mr. Jensen –  _“_

He catches the shine of gunmetal grey under the covers, too - grey and black and gold. Sarif tech. He pushes aside the neck of the gown, looks at dressings and… bolts. There are goddamn  _bolts_  in his skin. He sees lumps under the bandages, touches them and feels hard coldness. Metal. He works at the edges of the bandages, ignoring the stab of pain, and under them there’s…  more metal. It’s in his neck, raised under the skin. Must be in his collarbones.

There’s so much of it. It’s dark under his fingers as he runs them over yet more of it, trying to feel. Feeling and not knowing how. There must be some kind of sensor. The kind of thing SI’s people would think of.

He looks down, numb.

He didn’t know metal could shake. He guesses Sarif engineering must be good. That’s all he thinks, faintly, as he looks under the covers and touches the black polymers and metal where his hips should be, his hands trembling. He can barely see skin.

There’s nothing left.

He doesn’t realise he’s said it out loud until the nurse responds, “That’s not true.” It sounds faint, from a long way away. A few years ago.

He remembers that voice now. Someone telling them to stop. Blinding lights and pain, and knowing it was never going to end. Being held down and screaming, screaming -

He remembers Megan grabbing for him, and the bright white of a point-blank round to the face.

He reaches up. The hands don’t move right; he nearly pokes himself in the eye. He gropes blindly with metal fingers, feeling bandages and… something around his eyes. He feels himself curl inwards, one hand touching whatever’s been hammered into his skull. “Then show me,” he manages. “There’s got to be something…”

“You’re still healing. I wouldn’t advise it.”

He tries to sit up. The nurse – one of Sarif’s specialists, he remembers; he must have met her, there’s a vague memory - puts a hand on his shoulder, his arm. It’s gentle, but she’s trying to force him back down. Her fingers are gold against the black. Domestic augs, maybe a little heavy lifting, not like…

He locks his shoulder by instinct. Polymers tense, metal shining in the white light. There’s a hot surge of pain down his shoulder and his collarbone. It stabs into his chest and makes him cry out, but what would’ve been hard with his real arm is impossible for her with this one. He barely feels her struggle. She’s still talking.

“ _Please_ ,” he says, his throat raw.

He feels the moment she gives up. He almost glances at her, but he has to know…

He forces himself up, pain a spreading fire across his chest, and sees the mess of bloody bandages and Sarif tech on the bed that might have been him, once.

“Adam, please, you can’t - “

The noise he makes before they put him under isn’t quite human, but that makes sense. He guesses he isn’t anymore.

 

 

 

It had been one of Mom’s better days. Better months. She’d been happy. Here, not lost in her own head or crying in the kitchen or ranting to Dad on the phone about the dead-end job she’d picked up this week to put something on the table. Though maybe it hadn’t been that long, or that good. Everything’s fuzzier now, and those moments before the clouds came back down are less certain and gold round the edges the way childhood gets, with enough time. But he remembers her being happy, for however long that lasted. Pancakes. Taking him to school; he thinks he remembers that third-hand car with the jumpy suspension. Reading him stories in between shifts, warmer and smiling in the light of a bedside lamp. And then he’d gotten ill.

It’d been the worst thing he’d ever had, or it had felt like it at the time. Not chickenpox, she wouldn’t have touched him – or she might have, Mom always thought now was more important than the future even when it cost her – but something else, something bad. Seven years old, and he’d been sure on some level that this was it. He was dying.

Parts of the memory swim in and out of focus, but he remembers afternoon sunlight through the blinds, and her voice.

He remembers her fingers running over his forehead, stroking his hair back. “Everything ends, Adam.”

He coughs, hacking and rough, and looks up at her. “Even me?”  
  
“Even you. Eventually.” She sighs. She gets that weird look in her eyes, and looking back as an adult, as a cop, he’ll realise it was probably caused by the memory of something awful, and he’ll grimace and take a mouthful of scotch and wonder who says these kinds of things to their kids. When he’s seven, it’s just… weird. “But sometimes it feels like the end, and you’re just learning. Learning who you are. Pain can kill you, but it can teach you.”

“Don’t wanna learn,” he mumbles, turning his face into his pillow, but it doesn’t give his fevered skin any relief. “Hate school.”

She laughs a little. “See? You’ve already accepted it. You know I’m right. This is learning-pain, not dying-pain. And next time it comes round, you’ll know you can get through it. And you’ll know how to deal with it.”

“When? Mom, I don’t wanna get ill again, I can’t…”

“I know, baby. But it always comes back around sometime. And next time it’ll be easier. You’ll know for sure you’re gonna get better.”

“It’s not fair, I can’t – it  _hurts - “_ he says, squirming into the sheets, and he opens his eyes to try and tell her -

 

 

 

He wakes up to greyness and the knowledge he should be in pain, and the beep of monitors. He blinks against pressure on his face, and no, not grey. Shining black. He moves, and his – the hand falls away from his face. He squints against bright, clinical light where he’s curled up on his side, trying not to take up space. Old habits, even with wires in the way and metal against metal. He expects the limbs to catch against each other, but there’s a quieter, smoother sound instead, a half-whisper. Barely any friction. He knows that he’s never heard augs scraping awkwardly around, but it’s different when it’s him, when he’s…

He’s an aug.

He knows that if he hears it, he’ll end up looking over his shoulder for someone who isn’t there. That assumes he even gets out of here, and that he can function without constant monitoring and LIMB checkups. He was shot in the head. He shouldn’t even be alive. Ten years ago, he wouldn’t have been.

He examines metal fingers, clenching and unclenching his fist. Those are almost knuckles. The joints don’t feel stiff or slow – they might respond faster than his real ones. He reaches out to touch the dented bedrail, and there’s a sharp  _clang_ of metal against metal that makes him wince. Definitely faster response times. But he felt… something. Not pain, but contact. The same way he felt something close to skin and the scratch of beard when he touched his face.  What the hell kind of sensors  _are_  these?

“Mr. Jensen?”

He startles – didn’t even hear the doctor come in. He guesses he has an excuse in that he’s almost died, otherwise he’d say he’s getting sloppy.

She’s steel-haired, with severe features and a straight spine. She’s not looking down her nose at him, but her gaze is level. Assessing.

He sits up – slowly, wincing, but he manages it. There’s a twinge, but it’s distant. He knows it should hurt, and maybe it does, but the morphine takes the edges off. “Doctor…?” he starts, tilting his head.

“Marcovic. Vera Marcovic.”

He tries to talk and loses it, his throat too dry. Marcovic reaches out and lifts a jug a few feet away. She passes him a plastic cup of water, and there’s a crunching as it squeezes and nearly breaks in his hands – he grimaces as some spills on his sheets, and catches it just in time. He takes a swig. That still feels the same, at least. He guesses they haven’t replaced his throat, but who knows.

“Would it help if I told you this is progress?”

He looks at Marcovic, rolls round responses in his head that are all too curt or too miserable. “I don’t know,” he says, eventually.

“Usually we have patients fumbling more, smashing their hands into walls. That sort of thing. You’re making new connections unusually fast. I would blame the biochips, but I’m not certain they’re the cause. The PEDOT clusters…”

And that brings something back.

She raises an eyebrow. “You seem distracted, Mr. Jensen.”

“Megan and her team. Where are they?”

“That’s information I’m not privy to. You’ll have to ask Mr. Sarif.”

“Sarif? He’s here?”

“He will be soon. In the meantime, we should discuss your treatment.”

“How much…” He focuses on the weight of the cup in his hand. Breathes, and tries not to look at the carbon-black legs he knows will be under the sheets. “How much did you take?”

“Both arms and legs. We had to reinforce much of the chest cavity. Some of the skull and cranium had to be replaced, or modified. The eyes. There are some small additional augmentations.”

He shuts his eyes. Breathes. Breathes, and thinks about the metal that’s probably in his lungs. Takes stock of every muscle, and feels polymers shifting.

There’s a sharp sound, a dampness around his knees. He opens his eyes to a broken cup and water spreading across the sheets. It’s cold; he can still feel that. He guesses he shouldn’t be surprised by now.

Marcovic says, “I’ll fetch someone to have those replaced.”

“Doesn’t matter.” He looks up, and meets her eyes. “What’s left?”

“Plenty. You are still very much  _yourself,_ Mr. Jensen.” She almost sounds like she believes it.

He touches his hands to his head, feeling uneven patches of hair and hardness under the skin that could be bone or metal. He runs his hands over his face in what should be a light trace but is more of a drag, skin stinging under his fingers, and feels… “What the hell are these?” He touches the metal around the edges of his eye sockets.

“Mr. Sarif thought that in your line of work, a full HUD and shielding for your eyes might be… useful. It’s still being calibrated.”

“My line of…” There’s a low sound. He doesn’t know what it is until he laughs again. He puts his head in his hands.

“I will find an attendant - ”

“Wait.” It hurts to raise his voice, even slightly. It comes out more like he’s begging. Maybe he is. “I… Show me. Please.”

For the first time, there’s unease in her expression, and her eyes shift around the room. “Perhaps you should wait. At least let us – “

“There’s got to be a mirror, or a holointerface… something.”

“We will find you a mirror.” She nods, and then turns and leaves, her head bowed. He watches her go, and then looks back to his hands, watching white light shine on black metal. He shuts his eyes against the glare of it.

 

 

 

They’ve given him a private room. Perks of SI, he guesses. And it’s a LIMB special. He’s seen enough of these when he’s walked through while Sarif talks up new machinery in the clinics, or does the odd visit to show “I really do  _care_ , Adam. It’s not just kissing babies, it’s rebuilding a damn  _community._ ”  
  
That means a private bathroom.  
  
He blinks, and assesses the white door in the corner of the room, the one he’s been pretending not to notice since the beginning. It’s ajar.  
  
His head’s still swimming, between painkillers and trying to work out when the hell his life became this. But there’s enough of him left that it’s screaming  _move, damn it_.   
  
They must have put him on the good stuff. That’s all he can think, if he can move at all. He has to work at it – when did his body get so damn heavy, if it’s not all metal he should still be able to -   
  
He drops like a rock.   
  
Moving hurt, even through the painkillers, but hitting the floor is worse.  
  
The world goes white for a second, and between the shock and pain, he heaves – and then the whiteness fades from his vision and feels like it’s in his bones instead. It’s white-hot, and there’s a high whistle that comes from pain in his ears.   
  
He wants to scream, and he’s pretty sure he’s drawn blood trying not to. Yeah, definitely. Copper wells up on his mouth. He spits by instinct, grimacing at reddish saliva on the neat white floor. He thinks fuzzily that Mom would kill him. He wants to apologise, but someone’s probably footing the bill and he has to -  
  
He shifts, his chest and torso screaming at him to stop. The machines are, too – he realises the white-hot noise in his head is real, the monitors are going crazy. The lights are blinding, and every inch is a mile. He hauls himself, feeling concrete give, needing the handholds.  
  
He thinks he’s put his hands into some kind of powder until he sees the five finger-shaped gouges in the floor. He stares, blinks the thought away. Starts moving. Keeps moving. If he stops, he’s never getting up again.  
  
He can’t walk, so he crawls. He strikes out and feels more floor crumble under his hands. He grips tight, breaking concrete and hauling the rest of himself along. It’s a scraping drag, like he’s a sack of rocks, and he feels his eyes water with the pain. If they even can any more. Maybe that’s another phantom sensation.   
  
Fuck. He’s dead weight like this, just pain and mass.  
  
He’s halfway across the room when he hears: “Mr. Jensen!”  
  
God _dammit._  
  
There are hands on his shoulders – what’s left of them – then. Someone rolls him over. He somehow knows that if he’d been resisting they’d have had a harder time, but he’s just so… tired.  
  
He blinks, and the nurse from when he first woke up is there, eyes wide. She looks horrified. Yeah, he guesses her usual cases are a lot more… willing. “I’m sorry – I should have come right away – I didn’t know - “ He sees her eyes move to look at the gouges in the concrete, and then widen. She’s putting it together that he didn’t fall. She just looks back to him.   
  
He exhales, and it comes out more like a pained sigh. “Just… goddamn show me.” He looks at her gold fingers, bright against the black of his augs. Then he looks back to her wide eyes. He’s still trying to breathe through the pain, and he barely recognises his own voice. “Come on. You must’ve had - ”  
  
“Not like this,” she says quietly.  
  
“I don’t even know what they’ve… Please. Give me a straight answer.”  
  
She nods, with the slightest of sighs. “If you insist. But first we need to look at your pain management.”  
  
“I’m - “ He lets himself feel it, now he’s still. Feels like he’s been put through a woodchipper. His mouth moves, but he can’t even say  _fine._  
  
“Can you put a number on it?”  
  
He’s had more than enough injuries in the field to know how this goes. “One to ten?”  
  
She nods.  
  
“Seven. Eight?”  
  
She raises her eyebrows.  
  
“I can move. But feels like…” He grimaces, his head falling back against the floor and sending another small jolt of pain down his spine. “’Bout an eleven. I done any damage?”  
  
She shakes her head. “They’re built better than that.  _You’re_  built better than that. Now come on.” He feels her call up some kind of machinery. Probably a hoist system. “Let’s put you on the good drugs. Afterwards, I promise… Just don’t do that again.”  
  
He grits his teeth, tries to find words so he won’t scream. “You’ve… had runaway patients before, right?”  
  
She looks aside, to the machinery and the whirring robotics. “Usually they’re still in the coma by this point.” She seems to realise what she’s said too late, looks back to him sharply, but the world’s getting mistier.  
  
He closes his eyes, and breathes. He can feel his hands, scarred and bruised, twitching at his side, concrete dust under his nails.  
  
He keeps his eyes closed and tries to hold onto the illusion for a while.

 

 

 

They tell him it was a reaction to the painkillers. That they can make people impulsive, that he’d been out awhile and he probably wasn’t even aware of what he was doing, that thank God he wasn’t fully cannulated at that point. They make vague promises.

He nods, and listens, and watches the twitching discomfort in their eyes. They’re always biting something back, and he wishes someone would just  _look_ at him.

“What’s your name?” he asks the nurse who dragged him off the floor, when Marcovic and the other nurse have left.

“Sara,” she says. “I told you that the third time you woke up, but you were hopped-up on pain meds at the time.”

He snorts, slightly. “Thanks. But, uh… thanks.”

She gets the difference, and nods. She says, after a moment, “When you’re up to it, it’ll be worth looking at the paperwork.”

He raises carbon hands and just  _looks_ at them, hopeless. Even doing that aches, distantly, an echo in his shoulders and spine that should hurt more than it does.

“And you can ask me any questions you want. It’s part of what I’m here for.”

“Product rep?” he says, with a huff of humourless laughter.

She glares at him. “Nurse first. And I’ve been in that bed.”

“I heard next door got the better mattress.”

“ _Listen_  to me, Mr. Jensen.”

He gives up and nods, silent.

“We’ll get you a mirror. Just… be gentle with yourself. You’re still healing, you won’t look like this soon. We activated the Sentinel after the surgery. It’s already working. I remember when I woke up… For a second, thought I’d died and I was in Hell.”

“How’d you…” He gestures, vaguely. It’s too big and expansive, and he manages to bash his hand on the bedrail. “Shit.”

“Commode.”

He tries to shake his hand out, rather than dignifying that with an answer. There’s a vague discomfort, something he knows is pain, but it’s still – wrong. He tries to ignore the dent in the rail. “How much morphine you got me on?”

She smiles slightly. “A lot. The Sentinel works, but… it doesn’t necessarily cover pain relief. Not entirely. We haven’t fully activated it yet, we didn’t want to put any unnecessary strain on your body. That’ll get better fast. Your system… you don’t heal like…”

“Normal people?”

“Non-augmented people.”

He nods, chewing that over.

“Right. I’ll speak to the doctor.”

 

 

 

It dawns on him slowly.  
  
He sees a mess of metal and meat. His first thought is  _thing,_  and then his eyes focus and he realises,  _person._  He wonders who the poor bastard is in front of him.  
  
Then he watches their eyes widen, and they raise a hand, carbon-black and shaking. And he realises.  
  
There has to be something he recognises beneath the bandages and black metal. He sees some of the paleness he knows, but most is a mess of mottled skin, red and black and yellow.   
  
He reaches out, careful. He tries to find…  
  
He feels a hand on his shoulder. He thinks someone says, “Most of the bruising will be gone in a few days.” He shakes them off without meaning to and hears them stumble.  
  
He wonders at first if he’s still bleeding, then realises it’s his skin - still red, bruised. He stares at the bandages at his temples, remembering more distant pain and the flare of a gunshot. He stares at crescent ports by his eyes –  _a full HUD,_ he remembers hearing – and more bruises. The marks of implanted tech. Jesus, it’s in his  _head,_  Sarif’s gotten into his head -   
  
There’s a solid  _tink_  as metal fingertips meet the mirror. Too soon, too hard. It sways, but Sara and Marcovic hold it steady, one of them at each side.  
  
That shrillness is his ears again, piercing. He thinks someone might be trying to talk to him, but he can barely hear them. His fingers tighten.  
  
He meets… eyes that aren’t his. He stares at too-bright, false irises. Green and gold, Sarif tech. They blink back at him, wrong set in his face. They widen, flicker, stare. There’s horror in them.  
  
With his other hand, he traces trembling fingers over his shaved head. Then he presses at skin, fingers tracking across his cheeks, pulling at his swollen eyelid. Tries to find himself in the hyperaugmented thing he sees that looks like a Humanity Front billboard, a warning from some sci-fi novel. There has to be -   
  
He hears the glass cracking before he sees it. Jagged lines spread, widen.  
  
Someone’s calling his name. He doesn’t care.  
  
He watches the mirror crack and get hastily yanked back, carried away. He thanks God he can’t see the monster trapped in it anymore.

 

 

 

He wonders faintly, when he comes back to himself, if Mom and Dad would even recognise him. Seems unlikely, when he doesn’t either. They probably don’t know yet. SI is pretty big on guarding its secrets. That’s something, at least.  
  
And somewhere in the back of his mind, he thinks: Dammit, he liked that beard. He’d worked pretty hard on it.   
  
“Adam,” he hears. It’s overemphasised, tired. Someone’s been calling him for a while.  
  
He turns his head, and sees Sara watching him steadily.  
  
She says, “It looks worse than it is. Most of the bruising’ll be gone in a couple weeks.”  
  
“We’ll start PT in a few days,” Marcovic chips in.  
  
He stares at her. “ _Days?”_  
  
She doesn’t look at him. “Mr. Sarif has friends at VersaLife. And he ordered the very best care package for you. Besides, you’re…” She looks at his notes again, with the smallest raise of her eyebrows. “You’re recovering even faster than we’d hoped for.”  
  
_This is recovery?_  he doesn’t say, but they must see it in his face. “Sure,” he says instead, resigned.  
  
“Self-pity will only make this worse,” Marcovic says. “You are  _alive_ , Mr. Jensen.”  
  
He tries to say something, tries to blink away fires and bodies and torn labcoats where people had been trying to crawl for their lives. All he manages is, “I’m the exception.”  
  
Marcovic visibly remembers. “Ah. I’m sorry.”  
  
He shakes his head.  
  
“But the faster we can start you moving - in a controlled way, so you won’t exhaust or injure yourself - the less painful this will be.”  
  
“Right.”  
  
“Please try to remember that. You are alive.”

Yeah. All that means is there’s enough of him left to know what they’ve done.

 

 

 

He thinks he hears something about food. He looks up at that, and realises his stomach’s interested even if he feels sick looking at himself. He doesn’t understand why. You eat if you want to live.

But…  _Megan,_ he thinks, instinctively. He has to know… maybe she made it out.

He knows she’s alive, then he can lay down and die. It’ll be a goddamn holiday. Anything, as long as some asshole’s not out there with the Typhoon, laying waste with her research, her work… her people’s work…

They died for this. They died because he didn’t move fast enough. Because he didn’t think.

 _Megan,_ he thinks again.

He hears the mention of food again, out in the corridors. God, he wishes he knew what time it is. They don’t say what meal. Feels like he’s been in here for days, hours… Could be forever or minutes. He doesn’t know how many times he woke up, how long it is since they turned him inside out and shoved metal into him until no more of it could fit. Like a damn show model. Shining and smiling, always smiling, paid to turn up at events and hand out caviar and talk about how  _my life wouldn’t be the same without Mr. Sarif and these marvellous enhancements. Look at them! I even got to choose the colour scheme…_

That turns his stomach enough for him to take his mind off eating, at least a little.  

He hears the squeak of a trolley, somewhere, faint. He wonders if that’s the food they mentioned, or if it’s another kind of trolley. If some other poor bastard’s on there, being torn apart and molded into whichever company’s image. Maybe they begged for this. Maybe they’re an emergency patient. Maybe it’s someone from SI.

He wishes he could get his bearings. Wishes he could tell where it was, what the corridors are like. He vaguely remembers that all the LIMB clinics are roughly the same, grid layout wards, but he doesn’t have it all. Would make it easier to plan an escape, he thinks, with hollow amusement.

He listens to the low murmurs in the corridors. Nurses, maybe patients, real things. He can pick out words, threads, if he listens to them.  _Mary had her baby last week. She called him Johnny, you know? I said it was kinda Fifties, but she’s all about that vintage stuff…_

He realises, somewhere in the middle of it, that he shouldn’t be able to hear these things. LIMB rooms are meant to be soundproofed pretty well. Probably to stop the screaming leaking out. He pauses. Tilts his head.

His fingers smash into his ear too hard, at first. One more bruise, he guesses. He winces, hisses, and under his hand, he feels… bandages. He presses against his earlobe and tentatively works a finger under the plaster. He presses it gently, tremblingly, into his ear canal…

There. A few millimetres in, pretty deep. He feels a small, hard nub of metal.

He closes his eyes, numb, and pulls his finger away. Wonders if he damaged anything. Wonders if he should care. Probably not. SI make hardwearing tech.

His stomach rumbles. He tells himself that means there’s something left. He lies there, and closes his eyes. Drifts.

 

 

 

In the end, he doesn’t get a meal. He gets Sarif, who leans against the doorway and says, “Hey, Adam. How are you feeling?”

He’s trying to pour water from the jug without tipping the whole damn thing into the cup - something about these movements is too… much - but he stops when he sees Sarif and puts it aside. He manages not to slam it on the bedside table. He doesn’t want his boss to watch him fumbling.  

“Like I’ve been cut up and rearranged. How about you?” His voice is bitter, but he figures he’s probably lost this job anyway. He watched most of Sarif’s best scientists being gunned down and couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it. Some head of security. Besides, he’s on enough painkillers that he can probably call it impaired judgement later, if he has to. He’s pretty good at not remembering things.

“You’ve been out a while. It’ll get better. Doctors say you’re healing fast.” There’s false lightness in Sarif’s tone. “I’d blame the biochips, but maybe you’re just made of stronger stuff than the rest of us.” He raises an eyebrow and steps into the room properly, hands in his pockets. More studied casualness. Like he thinks Adam’s going to lash out at him.

Hell, maybe he’s right. These hands could probably snap someone in half. Adam tries not to feel sick at the thought.

“I need to know… Straight answer would be good. Megan? Her team?”

Sarif swallows, looks down. “I’m sorry, son. She didn’t make it. None of them did.”

He closes his eyes. His heartbeat’s loud in his ears.

“There was nothing you could’ve done… Hell, they nearly killed you too. We had to drag you back.”

There’s silence, except for the beeping of monitors and the echoing footsteps outside. (He didn’t even see her die. She must’ve bled out thinking they’d killed him.)

Sarif says, “I’m gonna… get a coffee. Give you a second.” He hears the door shut, and Sarif’s footsteps fade.

He puts his head in his hands. Skin would’ve muffled sound better. With these, the staff can probably hear every noise he’s making. It cuts him in half, leaves his throat raw and his ribs aching until he’s nearly curled in half, his chest screaming at him. He doesn’t care. He’s not sure he can feel much anymore.

He just wants so badly to sleep.

 

 

 

Sarif comes back with a cup of coffee, head bowed and gait wary.

The silence stretches.

“They lied to me,” is the first thing Adam says.

Sarif sighs. “Yeah, I heard about that. They had to get you treated. They’d already had to put you under a couple times when they’d tried to wake you up, they were worried it… wouldn’t be pretty. They could have handled that one better.”

He snorts. Then he looks down at himself, tries not to look at the broken plastic cup they forgot to take away, and says quietly, “This your idea of consent?”

“Your contract said - “

“Yeah, I read the small print. Just didn’t figure I’d be stripped for parts.”

There’s something written across Sarif’s face that on anyone else would be guilt - but this is David Sarif, herald of the augmented age, beyond reproach. ( _Admit, it, Adam – deep down,_ _part of_ _you like_ _s_ _him_.) “You were going to  _die_ , Adam.”

“Then you should’ve let - “ He chokes on it.

“Don’t, son. You don’t mean that.”

He puts a hand to his face, and it’s warm but it’s still metal. He can hear the whir of servos, faint but there. Wrong. Jesus, it’s all so wrong.

“And is that really what you think? Better dead than augmented? Because if that’s the case, I can tell you, you’re working at the wrong company.”

He wants a cigarette; something to do with his hands, something that means he won’t have to look at Sarif. But he’d probably just break the damn thing, the way he has everything else. He rubs at his forehead. Feels like he’s got a headache, but he knows the wounds are healing fast and he’s on the best painkillers Sarif money can buy. Probably psychosomatic.“You know I don’t.”

“Yeah, we all heard about Mexicantown. Just wondered if I’d heard wrong. Megan always used to say - ”

“Don’t.”

There’s a sharp silence, and then Sarif sighs. “None of it was your fault, you know that? We’re going to find the bastards who did this.”

He can’t look at Sarif. “You’re keeping me on? I got most of R&D killed.”

“I told you, no-one blames you. There are a lot of people who’ve been asking after you.”

So it’s all round SI already. Of course it is. “Right. Any intel on the attackers?”

“Armed terrorists. It looked like they were augmented.”

He remembers synthetic arms and being thrown through plate glass like he weighed nothing. “Definitely.” He tries not to look at his own hands, and wonders if he can do the same. Probably. “That all we’ve got?”

“For now. But I’ve got enough connections that I can ask around. We’ll  _find them_ , Adam.” Sarif says, with a smile in his voice, “And on the upside, if you want to help me look into it… we gave you a few more tools to do that.”

He looks up, something like dread rising in his throat, a question on his face.

Sarif’s hands are in his pockets again, and yeah, he’s smiling. The worst thing is the pride in it. “I gave you the best tech money can buy. All part of the employee benefits package, and a few extra.”

He swallows, finally saying what he’s known since the first time he woke up. “These are milspec.”

“With some stealth upgrades, too. And you’ll heal faster. We’ll start off slow, but you’ll be back on your feet in no time. Better than. I’ll pass on the paperwork.” Sarif places a pocket secretary on the bedside table, then puts a hand on his shoulder. 

He stays carefully still, and almost wonders how Sarif’s so calm about this, so unfraid, before he sees Sarif’s augmented fingers. Elegant, patterned, and probably strong enough to crush concrete.

Sarif’s still goddamn smiling. “It was good to see you, Adam. We’ll miss you at SI, but… take all the time you need. I’ll check in again soon.”

He nods stiffly, numbly, and watches Sarif walk away. Tries to think beyond the hole in his chest. He feels his fists clench at his sides, and raises them. Moves his fingers again, and watches them flex, trying to map the feeling to what he’s seeing. Muscle memory. He thinks about finding the people who did this.

It’s a while later, alone, when he tries for the pocket secretary Sarif left. Glass. Damn. He grimaces at the discomfort and the slowness of his movements when he reaches for it, but he gets there. He takes it and -

Shit.

He drops it, and for once his luck must be in, because it bounces, and doesn’t fall off the table. He tries again, taking it between two fingers with just a little more pressure. He snags it and lifts it. For a half-second he wonders if he can even use touchscreens anymore, but then he remembers all the times he’s seen other augs do it, and that SI wouldn’t have engineered something incompatible with half the tech around these days.

He’s seen this. He’s worked for an aug company. He knows it’s not impossible. He can -

It takes too long to lay the sec flat on the – on his palm. Metal and glass slide together, and it nearly falls again until he tilts his hand. Weird. It’s all – he’d expect it to be heavier, but if anything, it almost feels lighter. Handles faster than flesh and blood. It feels… wrong.

He raises his index finger, lifts it slowly.

It’s already logged in for him. He wants to say something to Sarif about security, but the boss probably thought he was being helpful. A window comes up – something about Sarif welcoming him back when he’s ready, and he archives it with a harder press than he should have. He knocks it out of his hand.

He’s half-moving to scramble for it, knowing he’ll never make it in a detached  _Terrific_ kind of way _-_

 - and his other hand snaps out to grab it out of the air.

He nearly drops it again, but firms his grip, turning the sec over.

 _Huh,_ he thinks.

The gold knuckle joints glint at him, and for a second, he wonders if Sarif even built tech that can show off. That’s about when he realises that Sara was right. He’s on the good drugs.

He remembers the shock and the impact of stretching his arm. Remembers calculating the distance. He realises that wasn’t the tech, or at least not  _just_ the tech.

That was him.

He brings his other hand up, carefully steadies the sec again. He grunts in when he shifts his legs, expecting pain. When it doesn’t come, he steadies the sec against… thighs, knees. If they’re even his, now. Then he types, painstakingly, finger by finger. He considers using one of his old SI proxies, briefly, but he figures that for all the guy’s an asshole, Pritchard will have secured every piece of tech Sarif brings in here and made sure it’s not tracked. Most people would call Frank paranoid. Some people say the same about him. He checks, briefly, and when he taps an icon: secure network. Sure enough.

It’s slow progress, but it’s… something. He has to fight these fingers, but sometimes there are seconds where he forgets to and they’re almost… his. That might be worse.

He at least remembers to log out before he falls asleep, even if the sec ends up skidding down the sheets and falling somewhere near his ribs. Better no-one finds searches on augmented private security firms and industrial espionage specialists.

Just for a while, it all fades.

 

 

 

It’s that kind of hazy dusk, and the sun’s gold through the blinds. He’s sitting, feet on his desk, crossed at the ankles. A few feet away, Haas is chewing on a donut like a stereotype while poking at a screen and muttering about “the damn report.”

For once, he doesn’t have work to do. He considers heading over to help, but the muttering has stopped, and he ends up staring at the ceiling fan instead, watching the blades’ shadows merge with the blinds’ and then bounce away. It’s a long, slow day. He’s missed those.

“Hey, Wayne?”

“Yeah?”

“You ever considered getting a dog?”

“You haven’t even asked me to move in.” Haas laughs, quiet and awkward, at his own joke. The clack of keys stops. “Damn. You going all picket-fence with that girlfriend of yours?”

He tilts his head, still watching the fan. “Yeah,” he says, thoughtfully. “I think I am.”

Wayne’s eyebrows raise. “Wow. You might scare someone.”

It takes a second, but he realises he’s grinning.

He heads home early, and it’s when he’s lying in bed, eyes closed, mind spinning in slowing circles and winding down, that he hears the front door close. There’s the sound of a coat, and then the door creaks open, throwing a stripe of light into the room. It’s slow and quiet, but not quiet enough. Megan’s never been any good at sneaking around.

“Adam?” she whispers. “You awake?”

“Am now.” But he says it fondly, without any sting.

“I thought you’d be dead to the world. Don’t I always tell you not to wait up for me?” He hears her heels drop to the floor, and then her work clothes get laid over her dressing-table chair.

He turns to watch and to greet her, even in the dim light. “Sure. But I like to.”

“I know.” There’s a smile in her voice. She slips under the covers. “When do you have to leave for work?”

“Four.” He reaches out and wraps a hand round her. “Plenty of ti – Meg, you’re  _freezing_.”

“No, you’re just warm.” She shuffles closer, wraps herself round him.

“I think you’re stealing all my body heat – Jesus, your feet…” If he cared, he’d move. And besides, he likes warming her up. He rubs at her arms, her sides, just for the excuse to touch her. Because he likes feeling her with him.

She laughs, sleepy and contented. “Of course I am. Why do you think I keep you around?”

“Yeah. Clearly you’re just using me.” He snorts, and kisses her hair, her eyebrow.

“Clearly.” He feels her smile, briefly, and then she’s asleep in his arms.

He follows soon after, still wondering how the hell he got this lucky.


End file.
